Telephones are generally available almost everywhere. Most telephones are private and any telephone calls are charged to the telephone on a monthly or bimonthly basis. It is not always possible or convenient to determine the time and charges for a single telephone call as it is made. Accordingly the use of somebody else's phone is many times awkward.
Further, toll or long distance telephone calls are used more and more as people travel more and conduct business on a less localized basis. Presently long distance calls can be made by charging the call to a local telephone such as for example to a telephone in a hotel room. The long distance call can be made by instant payment such as for example when using a public payphone. The long distance call can be made by charging the call to the calling party's home or business telephone or by using a telephone company credit card number. The long distance call can also be made as a "collect call" where the called party has to accept the call and is then billed the time and charges for the call.
Each of these present day methods for making and paying for toll calls has significant detriments. For example when a call is charged to hotel room telephones the hotel adds its charges to the call thereby disproportionately increasing the cost of the call.
It is extremely difficult to make long distance calls from public payphones since it requires large amounts of the coins--not ordinarily carried about--especially when touring or on a business trip.
The use of credit card calls often result in mistaken charges billed to the telephone credit card number. Further to obtain a telephone credit requires credit checks and the establishment of credit often almost impossible to acquire.
Salesmen similarly should be able to call their home offices from a customer's telephone without having the call charged to the customer's telephone which is inconvenient or to their home office phone with the previously mentioned difficulties and the added cost.
Thus there is a long felt need for a system which enables making telephone calls including local or toll calls conveniently, inexpensively and from any telephone. Thus if a party wants to make a call, be it a local call or a long distance national or international call, he should be able to accomplish the call from the nearest available telephone.